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Friday, May 7, 2010

Poetry Friday: Advice for a Killer

After reading chapter sixteen in the Hunger Games, we took off on a poetic adventure. The poem we read today is one that I came across as part of National Poetry Month. It was sent to me in an email recently, and it reminded me so much of the Hunger Games that I needed to share it with you all. It's called "Incident on the Road to the Capital" and it was written by a poet named Dara Wier.

As you can see, this poem is unlike a lot of other poems we've read in structure and form. The lines are a little more sentence-y than we usually encounter, and the poem tells a bit of a story. We talked a little about prose poetry this afternoon, and how this poem by Dara Wiler fits that category. After reading and discussing this poem, you all wrote your own prose poems based on this form. You took Wiler's basic structure and transformed it to become a prose poem about a tribute in the Hunger Games. The subject of your poem was about how the tribute dealt having to become a killer. At the end of the poem, you wrote yourselves into the poem and offered advice to the speaker.

Here is a sample student poem from today's lesson. We shared several of your poems aloud in class, as many were outstanding and powerful. Good work.